saxon-help

Saxon-B 8.4 is available at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=29872
Saxon-SA 8.4 is available at http://www.saxonica.com/ (existing license keys
should continue to work).
The main benefit of this release is bug clearance. There are also various
updates to align with changes in the W3C specs (which are now on last-call,
and haven't changed much).
The more adventurous among you might like to experiment with the new "lazy
construction" mode. This delays construction of temporary trees until the
contents are actually needed, and means that under some circumstances they
don't need to be constructed at all. This is switched off by default as (a)
I think it needs more exposure before it becomes fully reliable, and (b) the
performance results have yet to be fully assessed.
I've started to try and distinguish in the JavaDoc which interfaces I regard
as part of the "public stable Saxon API", which interfaces are purely
internal, and which have some kind of intermediate status, e.g. "for
experimental use only". Of course nothing can be guaranteed 100% stable, but
I want to do better than in the past.
The front page of the documentation included in the download, unfortunately,
describes it as version 8.3 - but the rest is up to date.
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/